The Nontraditional World Wars of the Present and Beyond

[quincannon]

This is an area for discussion of world conflict from 1980 to the present day and beyond into the near term future. I expect most of the discussion will be on national strategy, but operations and tactical application of new norms would also be fruitful. 

I will start with one of my screwy ideas. Bad actors must be severely punished, but the punishment must be swift, focused on but one objective, and when that is met, get out. What has changed here from what you say and what we already do, you might ask. Probably only one thing, the "get out" is measured in hours or days, not years, decades, and forevers.  Kill the bastards, destroy their pony herd, savage their tepee, and be gone, like an apple thief at a bodega.

[quincannon]

If it were only that simple. You are on the right track though, not especially with gangsta rappers, and young kids, but rather removing the cause of discontent. Human nature gives us a sense of wanting to belong. Hell, I want to belong here, and were it not for this board, there would be a piece missing from my life. That is the root cause of gang violence, and a root cause of terrorism. Mark would say, I'm sure, that this is the Center of Gravity of these issues. Solve them, demonstrate there is a better way, a pathway, if you will, to the goal of those individual human aspirations.

There also must be a realization that some things will never be solved by outside intervention. In those instances we must use containment, and let the problem either solve itself, or destroy those that the problem infects. The Middle East and Central Asia are two such areas. All the King's Horses and All the King's men cannot put that particular Humpty Dumpty together again, fore it never was together in the first place. It is a citadel of ignorance, and until they decide they wish to be part of the modern world there is no power on earth that can change what they are. 

There are those who argue that nation building is the way to solve these issues in the near and long term future, and those folks that believe that nonsense, are what gets us in these messes in the first place.  How long for instance did it take from the time the Magna Carta was signed until the UK actually became a modern democracy? About 7 Centuries I think, meaning that all these things take time to transform themselves, and we live somewhere in the begining, or middle of that time.
 

[Admin1]

I am going to put on my not often used Admin hat here. I have always stated that discussions on this board ends with the Vietnam era. I am willing to extend the conversation to modern wars as long as it remains civil. It is a sort of let's see how this goes and perhaps the emotions that put an end to the discussions in the past have been blunted with time.

[quincannon]

Concur Beth. This should be a discussion about strategy not politics. If it turns that way shut it down with the upmost dispatch.

[yanmacca]

Got rid of my post about gansta rappers, there maybe a few on this board who knows!!!!!!!!

[quincannon]

Something tells me Ian that they are absent.

[yanmacca]

yeah, they must be breaking the lock down and holding an illegal rave

[quincannon]

I am not sure what you are saying here Ian, but then again I have not been into pop culture since "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White" got replaced as Number One on the Top Forty Charts by "Rock Around The Clock". Or maybe it was when "San Antonio Rose" got replaced by "My Wife and My Dog Left Me, and I Sure Miss My Dog"

[Deleted]

As you all might expect, I have some thoughts on the matter. First, a slight revision of my list of principles of American Warfare.

1. Speak softly and carry a big stick. (We seem to shout and our stick is broken.)

2. Let’s you and him fight. (or maybe, pay them not to mess with us.)

3. Go big early. Get there fustest with the mostest.

4. Tragedy is not the business of the American Military.

5. The US should not go to war to protect repressionist dictators, hereditary monarchies, or corrupt regimes.

6. Don’t get involved in civil or in inter-religious wars; let the old colonial powers deal with it.

7. Don’t get involved in a land war in Asia or Africa. When considering strategy, our record is not so hot when fighting on the Asian continent is 0:4:1
     --Korea: Tie,
     --Viet Nam [we might have been winning when we left, but the South couldn’t use the victory],
     --Iraq 1: Tactical Victory, strategic defeat,
     --Afghanistan: Initial Tactical Victory, but ultimately a Tactical and Strategic defeat,
     --Iraq 2, Tie (Initial Tactical Victory, Strategic Defeat.

8. If you must violate rule 6 and 7, make sure the country has a seacoast.

9. If you violate rule 6, 7, and 8, make sure a good ally with a seacoast is adjacent to the country you are fighting (hint: Pakistan <> Good Ally.)

10. Remember, we fight on external lines of communication.

-------------------

Some other thoughts:

You can't talk about war without politics, because war is the continuation politics/diplomacy with the use of force and violence.

I'm a fan of Raids and Reprisals to accomplish a particular purpose, primarily punishment for a particular act or perhaps as a rescue.  I heard a Colonel on NPR today when asked what he thought we should have done was words to the effect of "Come here, defeat the Taliban, plant some Trees, go home."

I think we need to relook punitive expeditions.  The trouble is, of course, that the easy targets are no threat.  We need to carefully consider our use of drones to conduct raids and reprisals.  I think we like them because we are fans of technology, but I believe they actually are mainly counterproductive as the kinetic effects tend to have cascading non-kinetic effects, most of which are not in our favor.

We need to remember, we are a maritime nation; naval blockades may have a future use.

Instead of going to places where the English, France, Spanish, and Portuguese colonial empires screwed things up due to their (except maybe for the English* in some cases) of resource extraction, human trafficking, exploitation of the native populace, and other mistakes, we should let them deal with the places where things have gone awry.  If we feel the need, we can go help Mexico, the original peoples in America, or Canada.  We need to be careful with the last, they whupped us twice as I recall.)

I think we may need to rethink the purpose and structure of the US Army.  (See maritime nation above)

We would do well to study Byzantium.  I recommend The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire (and also its Roman predecessor) as a starting place.

*I give the English credit for wanting to establish colonies in order to build external markets.

Some of these things require consideration of COG, but not all.  Some are just to inflict violence on the people who do not mean well toward us.  And sometimes bribes may work better than raids, reprisals, or punitive expeditions.
 

[yanmacca]

May 1, 2021 22:11:19 GMT quincannon said:

I am not sure what you are saying here Ian, but then again I have not been into pop culture since "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White" got replaced as Number One on the Top Forty Charts by "Rock Around The Clock". Or maybe it was when "San Antonio Rose" got replaced by "My Wife and My Dog Left Me, and I Sure Miss My Dog"

Chuck, you gotta get down with the kidz!
Be more "street"

[yanmacca]

Mike, our colonial past will never leave us, as we are still paying for it now! Cash wise I mean.
We don't have an empire anymore but a commonwealth, and any nation in that group that needs help, we are the first there.

I must say that we left a good infrastructure in all our old colonies, railways, roads, hospitals, airports and ports all got built.

The big problem I found, was when we handed them their country back, they started killing each other with civil wars, closely followed by corrupt governments.

Didn't the USA, have an empire of sorts? Cuba, Philippines, Hawaii and purta Rica?

You left the Dutch off that list.
I remember when I was a kid and looking at a map of Greenland and seeing Denmark in brackets.

[Deleted]

Ah, yes. The Dutch and the Belgians.  Belgian conduct in Africa was particularly terrible.

I know perfectly well the UK is now part of a Commonwealth and not an Empire.  In my view, however, the United States rebelled in the nick of time and avoided the fate of many other colonies.  Yes, we gained an empire from the Spanish American War gaining Puerto Rico, Guam, I thing the US Virgin Islands, and the Phillipenes.  Maybe a few other places.  We promised the Phillipenes their Independence and attempted to help them prepare, with middling results.  I think we occupied Cuba, but did not incorporate it.  I don't think the other European Empires tried to prepare their colonies/possessions in the way we, however imperfectly, attempted to do for the Phillipenes.  We of course did participate in the partitioning of the world after WWI at Versaille, but were largely out maneuvered by the English and French and the outcome of that conference set up much of the trouble in the Middle East today, although they are perfectly capable of mucking things up all by themselves.  Did not Churchill say one of his biggest mistakes was not establishing a Kurdistan?  

[quincannon]

More street Ian? Are you saying I should be paved over?

[yanmacca]

The Kurds always got a raw deal, even today they still get a raw deal, didn’t they get shit on again after fighting ISIS and other nasties in Iraq? I don’t know who from our side did the deed but the Turks have treated them as terrorists for years.

The whole of the middle east is a tinder box plus it was a breeding ground for nutters, they didn't need our help to kill each other and the jews still would have flocked there after WW2.

We were not perfect, but who is, we made mistakes, so what the hell, we all make them, the French made a huge mistake on not relinquishing their hold in Indochina, which many think caused the Vietnam war and we all know how many American lives that caused, but that was De Gaulle for you, a nasty, bitter man.

When we were young, we was brought up on American TV and movies, even a lot of our toys had US influences, I personally live the USA, but I was shocked to here that Britain was not regarded well over the pond. I reckon that you won’t find a better friend than us, plus two of our commonwealth countries are not far behind us, Canada and Australia, I think that all three of us would back America if she needed our help.

You may think that your country rebelled at the right time, but your neighbours Canada didn’t and I consider the Canadians a true friend to Britain, so they did alright being a colony, so did Australia and New Zealand.

As I said Mike, I like the states, my mother did too, she loved US movies and music. I cant wait to go back to the states, went there in 2008 for two weeks, and loved every minute of it.

[quincannon]

Couple of things Ian.

1) Everyone in the that region is scared to death of a Kurdish nation state, the Turks in particular, but Iraq, and Iran are not that far behind. It is to the West's advantage to support the Kurds, but it is very difficult to do, seeing as Kurdish territory is land locked. Personally I would support a Kurdistan.  As a matter of fact I would support them more than Israel. The dream of a Jewish state is one that will self destruct, and it will do so because of demographics. Democracies are not democracies unless they are open to a multitude of ideas and persuasions.  Keep in mind here I am not talking about a State of Israel, but a Jewish State of Israel. That Jewish state is Israel's Achilles Heel. 

2) I don't think that anyone here has any ill feelings toward the United Kingdom to the point where you could ever say that the UK is not regarded well. We do have certain elements here that believe they are Irish patriots, but they are mostly confined to bar rooms on a Saturday night. Other than that though the "Special Relationship" is solid, and we never do anything here without first consulting Britain and the Commonwealth.

3) Every nation on earth, like every person on earth has reason to regret some portions of their past. That is not important, and playing the blame game is a waste of time, and energy that could be channeled into something much more productive. What is important is where we stand today and tomorrow, not yesterday.